Why Adele’s ‘Hello..’ Had Me In Tears Last Week

Relationships are tricky business; they’re not for the faint-hearted. Relationships have an unique ability to change the make-up of your being; who you thought you were before it, and who you are revealed to be during it can contrast to the point that you can begin to question who you really are. I mean, when you find yourself outside of his house at 3.am in the morning wondering if you’re going to set it alight,thinking of putting laxatives in his food to punish him for any crimes he may (or may not) have committed, thinking of sending a mass email to his friends and families detailing what kind of person he really is, or if you’re stalking her on Whatsapp, (you know, just to see if she’s online) checking her tweets on the hour, or checking whose pictures she’s liked on Instagram, then you’ve really got to take a step back and evaluate where you’re at in life.

If relationships are the stream then I must say that break-ups are the freakin’ ocean. Nothing compares to the pain felt when relationships begin to crumble into a huge heap of cliché sayings such as ‘I don’t think this is working’, ‘maybe we should try being friends (which, by the way, is the WORST suggestion in the world) and ‘I just need time to work on myself’. Shut the front door, fam – we all know those are codes for, ‘I DON’T WANT YOU ANYMORE’. In most cases, there is always one person in the relationship who wants to fight for it and wants to make it work, but if I’ve learnt anything over the years, it is that both parties need to water the relationship in order for it to grow again: one person isn’t strong enough to bring a relationship back to life.

Despite this piece being littered with humour (albeit dark), I don’t take the dissolution of a relationship lightly. I have had my fair share of heartbreak and I look back on each of them as defining moments, moments which although broke me, also allowed me to rebuild. If you had asked me two weeks ago whether I was ‘over it’, I would have said that I was at peace with my encounter with heartbreak that I write about the most/think about the most. I would have said that I had learnt about myself, about him, grown in various ways and only really looked upon the relationship with wise, fond eyes, (without sounding too cliché) full of appreciation for the people we once were but aware that our moment had passed. A present tense ‘us’ would make no sense at all; the people that once loved were dead (sorry, morbid) and to try to rekindle the love that they shared would have been too dangerous (and incredibly stupid).

Now, I knew all of this. I know all of this. So why did Adele have me in tears last week, thinking about picking up the phone and giving him a call?

I decided to listen to Adele’s ‘Hello’ because despite not wanting to follow the crowd, I am intrigued (and slightly enamoured) by her and her paradoxical nature; she is willing to be open and vulnerable when creating music but is staunchly protective of her private life, literally hibernating for years at a time. Adele can only be known through her music and her enigmatic nature continues to draw me in.

First listen.

I was fine.

Cool.

Nice.

A bit dramatic, but whatever.

By the THIRD listen, I was scrolling through my phonebook, eyes full of tears, trying to see if I still had his number so I could say…’Hello…’

I joke, I joke (kind of).

Although Adele’s ‘Hello….’ was heartfelt, heavy with meaning and emotion, I knew that it was unlikely that mine would be the same. On one hand, my ‘Hello…’ would result in Pandora’s box being reopened: every thought that had passed my mind would come flying out and I would apologise for what I did, what I didn’t do and possibly, maybe, show him how I had changed. That ‘Hello…’ would transform everything.

Or it wouldn’t.

In reality, my ‘Hello..’ would be weak, empty and disingenuous because I knew, deep down, that we had nothing more to say.

So instead of making that awkward call, I wrote a spoken word piece which I had the privilege of sharing at a concert I performed at last week. That conversation, with complete strangers, where I showed them my heart and my past, was somehow enough. That, and the 504872378 conversations I’ve had with God over the years where He literally worked out the kinks of bitterness, rage, insecurity and hopelessness. There is no song that could have healed me the way that He did.